Saturday, April 11, 2015

You know those days, where you wake up and you're just like "what the fuck is the matter with me?" You're at someone's birthday dinner and you're ruining it. Everybody there hates you. Your eyes water on a weekly basis. You're too preoccupied by something that happened to you six months ago to focus on an essay due tomorrow. Why didn't she say please; he didn't say thank you. Everyday it's like this and you know you're a mess! Fuck! Everybody else knows it! You know it can't go on like this, so you realise you need some help. Finally you pass through the threshold of the therapist's office, you shake their hand thinking "oh yeah! This dude has some work ahead of him!" And then you sit down on that chair, take a sustained breath through your nose, and realise that you got nothin'! You basically catch a glimpse of yourself in the metaphorical-mirror and recognise that you're maybe one of the most well-adjusted people to walk into the fucking building. I don't know why that is, because I'm insane!

Before last year, I'd never really been to see a counsellor or a psychologist. Since then I've been in four different offices for about twenty consultations, everyone of which confronting me with this same realisation - that perhaps there is nothing wrong with me.

Now, I'm not actually saying that I'm not as bad as I thought I was or that I've ever been miraculously cured from just one session, or even four, no. What I am saying is that my counsellor is bored out of his fucking mind by me. Nothing I'm telling these people is at all new or ground breaking. I'm not the Bieber of the emotionally-disturbed. They all ask the same questions: how is your sleep? How's your eating? Is it healthy? How's your fitness? How's your finances? And with each answer I give, I just dig myself little-by-little out of the metaphorical crazy-hole, because I’m not a liar and all of those things are fine, if not fantastic…unfortunately.

The point of this post is that I'm always expecting a bipolar-diagnosis and instead they hand me sheets about controlled-breathing. It's gotten to a point where professionals are asking me "what can I do for you, Ryan?" after only a few sessions. Which is basically the medical equivalent of “gimme somethin’!” Of course, I just sit there scratching my head, saying something asinine, like "I don't know." But instead I'm thinking "Wave a magic-wand and stop me from crying in the middle of the street, for fucks sake! Slap me across the face and remind me that I'm healthy, I’m male, I'm white, I'm loved and that I don't live in Baghdad! Just do something!"

One problem I've found is that my life never feels like it's crumbling the morning of a session, or even the night before. Every time an appointment is nearing, the days seem like the best ones I have ever had. I'm never sick. I never fight with anybody. I'm on top of my workload, not to mention the world. The car starts. It's like I’m waiting to see a doctor for a grazed-knee, but when he finally calls me in, I don't have a grazed-knee. Those days are so good in fact that I'm considering just booking my psychologist in for, you know, every day. Maybe the problem is that no counsellor has ever seen my temper. I’ve never thrown a chair and yelled “she’s such a cunt” or whatever. Happy-Ryan isn't raving-lunatic-Ryan's greatest salesperson. What I probably need is for an ex to show up and just verbally beat the shit out of me in front of him, that would warm the cockles of my heart.

It almost sounds like I'm begging to be worse-off just so that I can demonstrate that I actually am tearing down Worseoff Road with bad brakes, which is true, I am. I'm just in some sort of weird emotional limbo at the moment – too nuts for happiness, but too sane to treat. What's worse is that an imposter shows up to these sessions. I'm quite sure that both university counsellor's thought I was only there fishing for an extension on an assignment, that’s how sane I sound. To that notion I'm either right or just thinking exactly the way I always think, which is paranoid and neurotic. See why don't these kind of thoughts ever bubble to the surface when I'm on that couch, that would really help me out.

I'm Ryan.

What I am not is a lemming. Some people live but they do not acknowledge, they see a flaw and yet they simplyaccept it, they know of the wizards in books but not of life or the lessons along the way, they lack the knowledge and appreciation in the intricacies of the world and how they exist inside of it, opinionfails because they fail to voice any, they find bliss in their ignorance by saying ‘such is life’;